All 8 of them began to look in the corner....(it looked rather hap-hazard, junky, ignored)
I pushed the very hidden button= a mouse-sized ball-of-furr "ran" up the wall.
WOW! They all spun away from it, stumbling, banging into one another headed toward the opposite end of the room at the speed of "clumbsie"-light!!
When the dust had settled all 8 of these 20-something year-olds, all tall and larger than average people needed to be untangle and helped up from their scrimage-pile in the middle of the floor! (But who has the football?) (The cheerleader?)
After a few more episodes like this, they prematurely left my house, I had a mailing address for one of them, so I sent a post card asking for comments or suggestions?
They said it was alot of fun seeing their friends get scared, but it could have been scarier! ???
I guess they wanted chitty-pants and heart-attacks!?
Some people never miss a chance to afterwards be critical even though they WERE scared to death. Must be that "Macho" thing? Macho-laying -on-the-floor-thing?
Very funny!!

I did my first year of pro acting this past season and had great and similar experiences already posted - falling down, running out of my scene and refusing to exit past me, claiming they- well-needed another restroom, and at least one group who peered into my scene ran out and went around my scene to avoid me! LOL

One of the Funniest things that happened while I was acting as The Reaper at an event

One of the Funniest things that happened while I was acting as The Reaper at an event –
01-29-2011

I was following my newest scared souls through The Terror in the Junkyard Maze in Southern NJ , and these 3 girls were dragging behind in their group when suddenly they found themselves lost in a dead end in the maze when they turned around and saw The Reaper (me) standing behind them all 3 of them screamed so loud in fear that they pee d in their pants for real!!!

In my scene I would sit completely still for everyone to think I was fake and when I jumped up at this one group of mostly college-aged black girls [with a couple of their boyfriends] they ALL jumped back and fell over each other and ended up knocking half the room back a few feet before running out...then getting scared of the next room, which has fake bodies and an angry autopsy pathologist with fake knives waiting on them, and running back into my room. They got stuck deciding between the two and eventually ran on through the next room.

Another night two guys ran through the whole haunt. Like, at the end of the night we all checked with each other and they seriously ran through every single room. They'd slow down then get scared again and scream "oh sh--" and start full-on running again.

ANOTHER night, we did a group scare for the last group of the night and this one guy was apparently a MAJOR coulrophobe, because when he saw the clowns coming he ran to his truck, got in, and locked the door...including locking out his friends. So one of the clowns ran over to his truck [his friends were trying to get in and mostly laughing at him] and knocked on the window. The guy ended up in his backseat in the fetal position before we "left him alone" and when he unlocked the door to let a friend in the friend got in a slow as possible while we messed with him some more. [The friends completely gave us permission to do this as long as we wanted to; they thought it was hilarious] This ended 20 minutes later with the guy speeding out of the parking lot as one of our clowns ran along behind his truck. When we went back inside everyone was like "what the hell have you guys been doing??" I'm pretty sure there's a video somewhere in the interwebs. hahah

A Japanese teenager (tourist) never let me know how good or how much English he understood (but then it wasn't necesary at all either) when he got scared all he could say was:
"Oh SHEET! SHEET! SHEET!"
And ..there was no bedding involved at all.

Several black college basketball team mates were here, all tall, thin and of course, Very athletic.
They were leaving one room, one at a time,(as planned) we had been in that well lit room for quite a period of time, relaxation set in....
"Well, I said, looks like it's your turn now." To the last man standing next to me.
Then... my adopted son stood up from his in-plain-sight hiding place and merely said:"What about me?"
The basketball star jumped straight up, way up, floated there awhile (almost supernaturally)
moved sideways in mid-air, hit the floor, bounced up into the atmosphere again and then again (like he was on a Pogo stick!)
My Son had been sitting on a raised platform all dressed in dark clothing with his hands covered by gloves, wearing a white, thin , plastic mask, with his arm around a mannequin.
We handed him the plastic mask and the player put it on and went to possibly scare his team mates.
It is a good thing we have high ceilings .

Bob & Troy worked here for several years, knew the place forward and backward but I had something new for them.
"Walk around the corner and see the new thing."
With only a small amount of anticipation and possibly curiosity, they walked around the corner in the basement, it was dark.
As I pushed the button the 1/2 horsepower electric motor spun "on" rotating the short steel arm which had two heavy steel chains on the ends of it, beating a large steel barrel with an incredibly loud banging sound as a light illuminated two skeletal machine gunners behind the 1910 Maxum water-cooled weapon.
This sound defect also served double-duty for a few years as my doorbell.
Bob & Troy said they had never been scared before in my house until then. Troy picturesquely described his feeling/ experience as "Having shit blue lights"! "?"

After building a new "scary" thing , we invited two local middle-aged women over to test it on them (unknown to them of course) When activated, the response was immeadiate (with lights "On", no lead up or anticipation building) One woman shot across the room like she was pushing herself from starting blocks in a 100 yard dash! The other woman just quickly stood up.
Later a man brought his "Influential" friend here from Florida to see my house . I am pretty sure the Florida guy wasn't expecting much from a haunted house in the middle of nowhere but this new item scared him, impressed him so much that much later he left me a classic message on our answering machine that we kept as he complimented the experience and admitted I scared him!
What is so nice about my item is that I "get" someone with it, they react, then a few minutes later I "Get" them with Again! Anybody else do this? Same item twice on the same victim, with results!? Really good for laughs coming from everyone else in the room!

a first time customer was at a dead end (He thought), he was "cheating" had a cel phone lit up, he pushed a door, it opened showing him that it went noplace, he then pushed a solid wall , that is also a door, it opened a very slight amount, I had a sliver of room and I thrust a life-sized carboard cutout at his face through the small opening, he screamed and reacted very scared but funny!
Most of the rest of the people in that group saw and heard it too...except for his Wife, she was behind the behinder-most. Too bad for her, too lucky for him.

A couple of years ago when Graystone Manor was still running,me and a friend of mine scared two girls that thought we were "props".The next room was a dark amze they had to weave through and while they were in there a girl says.."I thought they were fake and I s#!t all over myself..(other friend)..."me too"...no I mean I really did s#!t on myself.

After that we had to step outside for a minute because there was no way we could stay in there..That's one of the funniest moments of my life..